


#15:	Hold your heroes to a high standard

by Knitwritezombie (Missa_G)



Series: 100 Rules for Adults (That Clint Barton Never Learned) [15]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, cleaning out the attic, made up comics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 02:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2412110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missa_G/pseuds/Knitwritezombie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil's mom asks them to clean up some things in the attic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	#15:	Hold your heroes to a high standard

A couple of days into their visit with Phil’s mom, when they could move without wincing too much, Phil acquiesced to his mother’s demand that he dig through the junk in the attic and either “ship it or take it home with you or throw it out.”

Clint was digging through a box of old comic books. “Hey, how come you don’t have these in your collection?” he asked, flipping through the titles in plastic sleeves.

Phil sat in a chair near Clint’s elbow. “These were my dad’s,” he said fondly. “Mom offered to give them to me just after he passed away, but I couldn’t take them…”

“Why not?” Clint asked, pulling out a book at random.

“Dad…dad collected anything,” Phil explained, lifting the book gently from Clint’s hand and running the fingers of his left hand over the cover while holding it in his right. “He grew up on the original Captain America books, but really, he’d read any comic he could get his hands on. But some of his choices…”

“Didn’t live up to your ideal?” Clint finished softly.

“Yeah,” Phil breathed. “Some of the things he ‘collected’ weren’t really any good. Some were actually crap, and I could go into a lecture worthy of an academic on the history and decline and resurgence of the comics industry, but I won’t.” He grinned. “I think he thought that if he held on to them long enough, people would re-discover them and he would have a collection worth something.”

“So, you’re saying that the ‘Adventures of Cyclops the Armored Penguin and his Pal Sal’ isn’t secretly worth a million dollars or something?” Clint asked, flashing the cover at Phil.

The older man laughed. “No, I’m afraid not.” He smiled fondly down at the cover. “That was one thing about dad. He thought anyone could be a hero if they tried hard enough. I think that’s why he kept trying to find something good in all these relatively crappy books.” 

“That’s why you started reading Captain America comics as a kid, wasn’t it?” Clint asked, stopping his rifling through the box to look at Phil.

His lover nodded. “We read them together. Dad really liked the idea of a little punk becoming a big hero and holding to the ideas he’d grown up with. I think that’s why he wanted to be a lawyer, to be honest. He wasn’t a fighter, my dad; he was never the biggest or the strongest, and he broke a hip when he was a kid that never healed right and left him with a limp, but he wanted to help people, so he found a way.”

Clint scooted over on the floor and pressed his temple to Phil’s knee. “He’s why you joined SHIELD.”

“Mm,” Phil agreed. “Mom helped with that, too. She solved crimes, he fought for kids who had no one else. Seems I was pretty much destined for something.” His eyes crinkled as he smiled down at Clint.


End file.
